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It was about fifteen years ago that Thalberg, who has just died only fifty-nine years old, was in this country. Jenny Lind had been here some years earlier, and Alboni and Grisi a little later, and Vieuxtemps and Sivori and Ole Bull a dozen years before.
When he was thus honored by the Emperor of Russia in 1856, he used the prophetic words, "These will do to ornament my coffin." Two years afterward he died at Naples, January 23, 1858, whither he had gone to try the effects of the balmy climate of his native city on his failing health. His only daughter married Thalberg, the pianist.
Originally a disciple of the Viennese school of piano-forte playing, a pupil of Mosche-les, and a rigid believer in making the instrument which was the medium of his talent sufficient unto itself, wholly indifferent to the daring and boundless ambition which made his great rival, Franz Liszt, pile Pelion on Ossa in his grasp after new effects, Thalberg developed virtuoso-ism to its extreme degree by a mechanical dexterity which was perhaps unrivaled.
In the series of concerts given by Gottschalk throughout the United States, the public generally showed great enthusiasm and admiration, and the young pianist sustained himself very successfully against the memories of Jaell, Henri Herz, and Leopold de Meyer, as well as the immediate rivalry of Thalberg, who appealed more potently to a select few.
But it is as well to state, that there are two great operatic enterprises, as there are two rival musical broker managers: to wit, Maretzek and Ullman; the former backed by Marshall of the Philadelphia Academy, and proceeding forth with hope to conquer from that centre; the latter backed by Thalberg, and strengthened by the Strakosch and Vestvali tributaries that roll proudly in from scenes of conquest in the Western States and Mexico.
As, for example, Robert Schumann writes of Thalberg and his playing, on the occasion of a charity concert, given in Leipzig in 1841: "In his passing flight the master's pinions rested here awhile, and, as from the angel's pinions in one of Rucker's poems, rubies and other precious stones fell from them and into indigent hands, as the master ordained it.
The comparative estimate of the two men, Liszt and Thalberg, was that the former was a player of eccentric genius, the latter of consummate talent: a judgment which is very apt to spring from a superficial theory that eccentricity is the signet of genius. The long hair, the wild aspect of Paganini, did much to confirm this feeling.
This morning he again played at Raimund Härtel's, in a way to make us all tremble and rejoice, some études of Chopin, a number of the Rossini soirées, and other things." Of other contemporary pianists Hummel, "ten years behind the time," and Thalberg, whom he liked better as pianist than as composer, are alluded to.
In connection with Chopin's production of tone, I must not omit to mention his felicitous utilisation of the loud and soft pedals. It was not till the time of Liszt, Thalberg, and Chopin that the pedals became a power in pianoforte-playing. Hummel did not understand their importance, and failed to take advantage of them.
In his piano music can be found the germs of most of the pianistic innovations that are usually identified with other composers for instance, the manner of enveloping the melody with runs, the discovery of which has been ascribed to Thalberg, but which we find in Mendelssohn's first Prelude, written in 1833.
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